175 
T9 


PROPAGANDA   IN 
HISTORY 


By   LYON   G.    TYLER 

RICHMOND,   VA. 


RICHMOND: 

RICHMOND  PRESS,  INC.,  PRINTERS 
1920 


Propaganda  In  History. 

During  the  World  War  we  heard  a  great  deal  of  propaganda, 
and  the  word  WPS  used  generally  in  a  bad  sense.  But  there  is 
really  nothing  harmful  in  the  word  itself.  It  signifies  only  a  means 
of  publicity,  which,  when  applied  properly  and  legitimately  serves 
a  very  good  purpose.  The  Germans  applied  it  improperly.  They 
sent  to  this  country  millions  of  dollars  to  buy  up  newspapers  and 
newspaper  men  to  abuse  the  allies  and  make  palatable  their  own 
conduct,  too  often  brutal  in  the  extreme.  Propaganda  is  a  form 
of  advertisement,  and  it  is  only  when  advertisements  are  resorted  to 
for  the  purpose  of  spreading  erroneous  conceptions  that  they  are  to 
be  condemned.  Quack  advertisements  are  at  all  time  pernicious. 
A  feature  especially  popular  in  this  country  is  propaganda  ap 
plied  to  history.  This  consists  in  using  striking  characters  and 
events  of  the  past  to  give  importance  to  present  matters.  As  long 
as  the  truth  is  told  much  good  must  result,  for  the  past  contains 
vast  archives  of  experience,  from  which  valuable  information  may 
he  had.  The  reverse  happens  when  to  give  prominence  to  particu 
lar  ends,  historical  matter  is  exploited  at  the  expense  of  truth. 

These  thoughts  are  suggested  by  what  is  so  often  read  in  the 
newspapers  and  periodicals  of  the  North  and  even  in  books  which 
have  a  more  serious  character.  By  sheer  dint  of  assertion,  taken 
up  and  published  as  if  by  concerted  arrangement,  certain  things 
are  given  a  character  that  never  did  belong  to  them.  The  idea 
seems  to  be  with  many  who  are  active  in  the  matter  that  the  real 
truth  makes  no  difference  provided  the  multitude  can  be  got  to 
accept  a  certain  view.  This  is  the  very  essence  of  German  propa- 
gaiidism,  so  much  feared  and  condemned  during  the  World  War. 
But  this  is  not  true  of  all,  for  there  are  some  who  appear  to  be 
swept  along  by  a  force  which  they  are  powerless  to  resist. 

Let  me  cite  some  of  the  cases  which  have  been  made  the 
subject  of  this  kind  of  exploitation. 

1.  There  is  a  manifest  disposition  to  place  Plymouth  before 
Jamestown.  It  is  an  old  story  and  goes  back  a  hundred  and  fifty 


M17459 


years  to  the  historian  Hutchinson,  who  asserted  in  his  history 
of  Massachusetts  that  the  Virginia  colony  had  virtually  failed  and 
that  the  Pilgrim  colony  was  the  means  of  reviving  it.  How  far 
from  the  truth  Hutchinson  strayed  in  his  statement  is  shown  by 
Bradford's  contemporary  narrative  "The  Plymouth  Plantation/' 
which  proves  very  clearly  that  it  was  the  successful  establishment 
of  the  Virginia  colony  that  induced  the  Puritans  to  leave  Hol 
land  for  America,  in  preference  to  some  Dutch  plantation  like 
Guiana.  Sir  Edwyn  Sandys  was  the  patron  as  well  of  the  Puritan 
colonv  as  of  the  Virginia  colony.  They  sailed  under  a  patent  of 
the  Virginia  Company  of  London  granted  through  his  auspices, 
and  when  by  miscalculation  they  landed  outside  of  the  dominion 
of  the  Virginia  Company  the  compact  adopted  by  them  in  the 
cabin  of  the  Mayflower  followed  th*  terms  of  the  original  patent. 
It  was.  indeed,  owing  to  the  Jamestown  Colony  that  landing  was 
at  all  possible.  Six  years  before,  Sir  Thomas  Gates  had  sent 
Argall  from  Jamestown,  who  had  driven  the  French  from  their 
settlements  in  Nova  Scotia  and  on  the  coast  of  Maine,  and  thus 
prevented  them  from  occupying  the  coast  of  Massachusetts  as  they 
were  about  to  do. 

So  far  from  the  truth  was  Hutchinson's  statement  that  in 
1620  the  Virginia  colony  had  virtually  failed,  that  even  after  the 
massacrte  of  1622'  Virginia  had  over  nine  hundred  colonists,  and 
the  Plymouth  colonv  but  one  hundred  and  fifty,  and  these,  accord 
ing  to  Bradford,  were  in  a  starving  condition  from  which  they  were 
rescued  by  a  ship  of  Capt.  John  Hudclleston.  a  member  of  the 
Virginia  colony.  In  1629  when  the  Plymouth  colony  had  300 
inhabitants,  the  Jamestown  colony  had  3.000. 

But  rtecent  writers  do  not  even  admit  the  reservation. of  Hutch 
inson  of  a  prior  though  vanishing  Jamestown.  That  ancient  settle 
ment,  with  all  that  it  stands  for.  is  actually  to  be  snubbed  out  < 
recognition,  and  the  claim  is  now  boldly  advanced  that  the  Ply 
mouth  settlement  was  the  first  colony  and  all  Americans  the 
virtual  output  of  that  plantation.  Jamestown  is  not  to  be  al 
lowed  (even  a  share  in  the  upbuilding  of  America.  Can  anything 
be  more  astonishing,  and  where  is  the  "New  England  conscience" 
that  it  does  not  revolt  against  this  perversion  of  the  truth? 


Among  the  many  recent  instances  of  this  historic  prevarication 
which  have  fallen  under  my  notice,  reference  may  be  made  to  the 
columns  of  the  Saturday  Evening  Post  for  February  7,  1920,  to 
the  World's  Work  for  November,  1919.  and  to  Mr.  James  M.  Beck's 
book.  "The  War  and  Humanity,"  published  by  G.  P.  Putnam's 
Sons  in  1917.  No  plea  of  ignorance  can  be  advanced  for  these 
writers,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  impossible  to  believe  that  they 
deliberately  falsified.  They  come  under  the  class  of  propaganda 
victims  rather  than  propaganda  sinners.  They  were  swept  on 
against  their  own  better  knowledge  by  the  spirit  of  propagandism 
so  deadly  to  the  very  existence  of  truth. 

As  to  the  first  these,  the  article  in  the  Saturday  Evening 
Post,  the  person  who  composed  the  editorial  entitled  "Sanctuary," 
uses  the  following  words: 

"Two  ships,  the  Mayflower  and  the  Buford,  mark  epochs  in  the 
history  of  America.  The  Mayflower  brought  the  first  of  the 
builders  to  this  country,  the  Buford  has  taken  away  the  first 
destroyer." 

We  learn  from  the  Richmond  News  Leader  for  March  1,  1920, 
that  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Henry  Lyons,  the  historian  general  of  the 
National  Society  of  the  Colonial  Dames  in  the  State  of  Virginia, 
wrote  a  protest  against  this  statement  and  received  a  reply  vir 
tually  admitting  that  the  editors  knew  differently  when  they  made 
it.  Their  words  were  that  in  "a  strict  sense"  Mrs.  Lyons  was  "his 
torically  correct,"  but  that  "they  did  not  believe  in  this  narrow 
sense  our  editorial  is  likely  to  be  misleading  even  to  school  boys, 
who  are  thoroughly  familiar  with  these  dates  in  American  history." 
The  dates  referred  to  were  1607,  when  the  Sarah  Constant  and 
her  two  companion  ships  brought  the  first  settlers  to  Jamestown, 
and  1620,  when  the  Mayflower  brought  the  Puritans  to  Plymouth 
in  Massachusetts. 

There  is  a  hint  here  that  in  a  broad  sense  the  article  in  the  paper 
was  correct,  but  on  this  point  the  learned  editors  did  not  en 
lighten  Mrs.  Lyons.  There  is  no  broader  word  than  error  and  no 
narrower  word  than  truth.  It  is  the  Good  Book  which  says: 
"Enter  ye  by  the  narrow  gate ;  for  wide  is  the  gate  and  broad  the 
way  that  leadeth  to  destruction." 


The  plain  truth  is  that  neither  in  its  origin  nor  in  the  in 
stitutions  established  in  New  England  did  the  Plymouth  colony 
lay  the  foundation  of  the  American  Commonwealth.  It  was  ante 
dated  by  Jamestown,  and  for  a  very  long  time  its  institutions 
were  aristocratic  in  every  feature.  American  institutions  of  to 
day  are  democratic,  and  are  tested  by  the  law  of  reason  and  nature. 
On  the  contrary,  in  New  England  the  suffrage  was  confined  dur 
ing  the  seventeenth  century  to  a  few  favored  members  of  the  Con 
gregational  Church,  and  everything  was  tested  by  the  stern  decrees 
of  the  Old  Testament.  In  Massachusetts  the  law  divided  the  peo 
ple  into  "the  better  class,"  "those  above  the  ordinary  degree,"  and 
"those  of  mean  condition."  Though  there  were  annual  elections 
the  magistrates  had  no  difficulty  in  retaining  office  for  life  through 
the  law  of  preference,  which  universally  prevailed,  and  the  town 
meetings  were  little  oligarchies  governed  by  the  minister  and  a 
select  clique.1  So  the  Rev.  Mr.  Stone  aptly  described  Massachusetts 
of  the  seventeenth  century  "as  a  speaking  aristocracy  in  the  face  of 
a  silent  democracy." 

Though  the  Charter  of  King  William,  in  1691,  introduced  sev 
eral  very  important  reforms  in  Massachusetts,  and  his  firm  hand 
in  suppressing  tyranny  in  all  the  other  New  England  colonies  was 
strongly  felt,  the  essential  principles  of  the  Puritan  governments 
remained  the  same.  To  the  very  end  of  the  colonial  days  the  dis 
tinctions  in  society  were  observed  with  such  punctilious  nicety  +1™* 
the  students  at  Harvard  and  Yale  were  arranged  according  to  the 
dignity  of  their  birth  and  rank,  and  the  ballot  was  very  limited. 
Weeden  in  his  Social  and  Economic  History  of  New  England  sums 
up  the  character  of  the  New  England  institutions  in  the  words 
that  "they  were  democratic  in  form,  but  aristocratic  in  the  sub 
stance  of  the  administration."  And  even  today  some  of  the  worst 
inequalities  in  elections  prevail  in  the  New  England  States.2 

On  the  other  hand,  Virginia,  where  the  first  colony  was  planted, 
which  afforded  inspiration  to  all  the  rest,  appealed  from  the  first 

iFor  the  working  of  the  ballot  in  New  England,  see  Baldwin  in 
American  Historical  Papers,  IV,  p.  81. 

2Jones,  The  Rotten  Boroughs  of  New  England  in  North  American 
Review,  CXCVII,  p.  486. 


to  the  law  of  nature  and  of  reason,  which  constitutes  the  very  es 
sence  of  the  democratic  principle.  She  had  the  first  English  in 
stitutions,  as  shown  in  the  first  jury  trial,  the  first  popular  elec 
tions,  and  the  first  representative  body  of  law  makers,  and,  before 
any  Puritan  foot  had  planted  itself  upon  Plymouth  Rock,  courts 
for  the  administration  of  justice  and  for  the  recordation  of  deeds, 
mortgages  and  wills,  were  established  facts.  Instead  of  resting 
on  church  membership  as  in  Massachusetts,  the  House  of  Bur 
gesses,  which  was  the  great  controlling  body  in  Virginia,  rested 
for  more  than  a  hundred  years  upon  universal  suffrage.  There 
was,  it  is  true,  an  apparent  change  in  1670  when  the  possession 
of  a  freehold  was  made  the  condition  of  voting,  but  it  was  not  a 
real  change,  since  the  law  did  not  define  the  extent  of  the  free 
hold  until  as  late  as  1736;  and  even  under  the  new  law,  as  shown 
by  Dr.  J.  F.  Jameson,3  more  people  voted  in  Virginia  down  to  the 
American  Revolution  than  did  in  Massachusetts.  There  was  a 
splendid  and  spectacular  body  of  aristocrats  in  colonial  Virginia, 
but  they  did  not  have  anything  like  the  political  power  and  pres 
tige  of  the  New  England  preachers  and  magistrates. 

That  popular  institution's  were  a  dominating  feature  in  Vir 
ginia  is  the  evidence  of  Alexander  Spotswood,  who  writing,  in 
1713,  declared4  that  the  Assembly  which  met  that  year  was  com 
posed  of  representatives  of  the  plain  people;  of  Governor  Robert 
Dinwiddie,  who,  in  1754,  complained5  of  the  House  of  Burgesses 
for  their  "constant  encroachment  on  the  prerogatives  of  the  Crown 
and  "their  Republican  ways  of  thinking;77  of  Rev.  Andrew 
Burnaby,  an  English  traveler,  who,  in  1759,  wrote  of  the  public 
or  political  character  of  the  Virginians,  as  haughty  and  impatient 
of  restraint,  and  "scarcely  able  to  bear  the  thought  of  being  con 
trolled  by  any  superior  power;'7  of  Col.  Landon  Carter,  of  "Sa- 
bine  Hall,  "who  attributed6  his  own  defeat,  in  1765,  to  his  un 
popularity  with  the  common  voters,  who  were  jealous  of  any  aris 
tocratic  pretentious;  of  J.  F.  D.  Smythe,  another  British  traveler 

*New  York  Nation,  April  27,  1893. 
^Letters  of  Alexander  Spotswood,  II,  p.  1. 
*The  Official  Records  of  Robert  Dinwiddie,  I,  p.  100. 
^William  and  Mary  Quarterly,  XVI,  259. 


6 

before  the  American  Revolution,  who  spoke  of  the  haughtiness  of 
the  great  middle  class,  who  comprised  half  of  the  population;  of 
Edmund  Randolph,  who  referring  to  the  same  period  described7 
the  aristocracy  of  Virginia  as  "little  and  feeble,  and  incapable  of 
daring  to  assert  any  privilege  clashing  with  the  rights  of  the 
people  at  large;"  of  Colonel  St.  George  Tucker,  who  denied8  that 
there  was  such  a  thing  as  "dependence  of  classes"  in  Virginia,  and 
declared  that  the  aristocracy  of  Virginia  was  as  "harmless  a  set 
of  men  as  ever  existed;"  and  finally  of  Thomas  Jefferson,  who,  in 
1814,  writing9  to  John  Adams,  while  referring  to  the  tradi 
tionary  reverence  paid  to  certain  families  in  Massachusetts  and 
Connecticut,  "which  had  rendered  the  officers  of  those  governments 
nearly  hereditary  in  those  families,"  derided  the  power  of  the 
aristocracy  in  Virginia  both  before  and  after  the  Revolution. 

If,  indeed,  there  was  any  doubt  where  popular  institutions  had 
the  stronger  hold,  the  doubt  is  removed  when  we  notice  what  hap 
pened  when  the  two  communities  for  the  first  time  had  the  oppor 
tunity  of  directing  without  foreign  restraint,  the  government  of 
their  own  country.  Soon  after  independence  was  secured,  Virginia 
became  the  headquarters  of  the  Democratic-Republican  Party— 
the  party  of  popular  ideas — and  New  England  became  the  head 
quarters  of  the  Federalist  Party — the  party  of  aristocratic  ideas. 

In  the  work  of  making  a  constitution  for  the  new  government 
and  of  organizing  it,  Virginia,  as  John  Fiske  says,  furnished  "four 
out  of  the  five  constructive  statesmen  engaged" — Washington, 
Jefferson,  Madison  and  Marshall.  Not  one  of  them  was  of  Puri 
tan  stock.  The  fifth  was  Alexander  Hamilton,  a  native  of  the 
West  Indies  and  a  New  Yorker  by  adoption.  In  the  matter  of 
extending  our  territories  it  was  the  cavalier,  George  Rogers  Clark, 
that  conquered  the  Northwest  Territory,  now  represented  by  five 
great  States.  And  Louisiana,  Florida,  Texas,  California,  New 
Mexico  and  all  the  West  were  added  to  the  Union  by  Virginian 
and  Southern  Presidents,  thus  trebling  the  area  of  the  Republic 
and  making  it  a  continental  power.  Had  the  Puritan  influence, 

THenry,  Patrick  Henry,  I,  209. 

^William  and  Mary  College  Quarterly,  XXII,  252. 

9/ftid.,  XXIII,  227. 


which  opposed  these  annexations  of  territory,  prevailed,  the  United 
States  would  be  confined  to-day  to  a  narrow  strip  along  the  Atlantic 
Coast. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  rightful  name  of  the  Republic  is  the 
historic  name  of  Virginia  (first  given  by  the  greatest  of  English 
queens  and  accepted  by  the  Pilgrim  Fathers  in  the  Mayflower 
compact).  "United  States  of  America,"  are  merely  words  of  de 
scription.  They  are  not  a  name. 

Now  as  to  the  writer  in  the  World's  Work. .  This  is  no  less  a 
person  than  William  Snowden  Sims,  an  admiral  in  the  United 
States  Navy.  In  an  article,  entitled  "The  Return  of  the  May 
flower/'  he  describes  how  Great  Britain  welcomed  our  navy  at 
the  outset  of  our  participation  in  the  war  with  a  moving  picture 
film  which  depicted  how  in  1620  a  few  Englishmen  had  landed 
in  North  America  and  laid  the  foundations  of  a  new  state,  based  on 
English  conceptions  of  justice  and  liberty,  how  out  of  the  dis 
jointed  colonies  they  had  founded  one  of  the  mightiest  nations  of 
history,  and  how  when  the  liberties  of  mankind  were  endan 
gered,  the  descendants  of  the  "old  Mayflower  pioneers"  had  in 
their  turn  crossed  the  ocean — this  time  going  eastward  to  fight  for 
the  traditions  of  the  race.  Admiral  Sims  makes  this  comment: 

"The  whole  story  appealed  to  the  British  masses  as  one  of  the 
great  miracles  of  history — a  single  miserable  little  settlement  in 
Massachusetts  Bay  expanding  into  a  continent  overflowing  with 
resources  and  wealth — a  shipload  of  men,  women  and  children 
developing  in  three  centuries  into  a  nation  of  more  than  100,000,- 
000  people.  And  the  arrival  of  our  destroyers,  pictured  on  the 
film,  informed  the  British  people  that  all  this  youth  and  energy 
had  been  thrown  upon  their  side  of  the  battle." 

Not  a  hint  of  Jamestown,  not  a  word  of  tribute  to  the  men, 
who,  in  the  early  days  before  Plymouth  Rock,  laid  down  their  lives 
by  thousands  that  this  great  continent  might  be  saved  from  French 
and  Spanish  dominion  and  Plymouth  itself  might  exist. 

Nothing  more  aptly  describes  the  effect  of  this  propagandist 
program  than  its  acceptance  and  exploitation  in  England  through 
the  moving  picture  film  described  by  Admiral  Sims.  The  English 
managers  cared  nothing  between  Jamestown  and  Plymouth,  but 


were  bent  from  their  natural  regard  for  truth,  by  the  wish  to 
please  the  present  dominant  influence  in  America,  which  they 
correctly  located  northward. 

Finally,  as  to  Mr.  Beck,  in  his  book,  entitled  "The  War  and 
Humanity,"  which  Theodore  Roosevelt  endorsed  with  a  "Fore 
word,"  no  one  can  doubt  that  he  knew  better  when  he  wrote  the 
words  which  follow.  They  were  part  of  an  address  delivered  by 
him  in  1916  at  a  luncheon,  given  to  him  in  London  by  the  Pil 
grim  Society  of  that  city,  when  Viscount  Brice  and  other  emi 
nent  Englishmen  were  present.  And  yet  he  must  not  be  judged 
too  harshly.  Like  Admiral  Sims,  he  was  the  helpless  victim  of 
propaganda.  Mr.  Beck  said: 

"Never  was  a  nation  more  dominated  by  a  tradition  than  the 
United  States  by  the  tradition  of  its  political  isolation.  It  has  its 
root  in  the  very  beginning  of  the  American  Commonwealth.  In 
nine  generations  no  political  party  and  a  few  public  men  have 
ever  questioned  its  continued  efficacy.  The  pioneers  who  came  in 
1620  across  the  Atlantic  to  Plymouth  Bock  and  founded  the 
American  Commonwealth  desired  like  the  intrepid  Kent  in  King 
Lear  'to  shape  their  old  course  in  a  country  new/  so  that  the 
spirit  of  detachment  from  Europe  was  emplanted  in  the  very  souls 
of  the  pioneers  who  conquered  the  virgin  forests  of  America." 

Mark  what  Mr.  Beck  said:  "The  pioneers  who  came  in  1620 
across  the  Atlantic  to  Plymouth  Bock  and  founded  the  American 
Commonwealth."  Not  a  word  of  the  men  who  came  in  the  Sarah 
Constant,  the  Goodspeed  and  the  Discovery,  and  prepared  the  way 
at  Jamestown  for  all  future  colonization  of  America. 

2.  The  second  myth  which  has  been  extensively  circulated  is 
that  the  Plymouth  settlers  came  to  America  for  religious  freedom. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  they  left  England  for  Holland  because  they 
were  persecuted,  and  they  left  Holland  for  America,  not  because 
they  were  persecuted  by  the  Dutch,  but,  as  Bradford  narrates, 
because  they  w^ere  in  danger  of  being  absorbed  in  the  body  of  the 
Dutch  nation  by  natural  causes.  Charles  M.  Andrews,  in  a  re 
cent  work,  declares  that  with  the  single  exception  of  giving  to 
New  England  the  congregational  form  of  worship,  these  humble 


9 

and   simple   settlers   were   "without   importance   in   the   world   of 
thought,  literature  or  education." 

The  settlers  who  came  with  John  Winthrop  in  1630  were  the 
real  builders  of  Massachusetts,  which  for  a  century  and  a  half 
was  the  enemy  of  free  thought.  The  persecuted  in  England  turned 
persecutors  in  America,  and  the  colonial  disputes  with  England 
turned  upon  the  religious  and  political  tyranny  which  the  Puri 
tans  erected  in  New  England.  Far  from  religious  convictions 
being  the  only  driving  force  that  sent  hundreds  of  men  to  New 
England,  hardly  a  fifth  of  the  people  in  Massachusetts  were  pro 
fessed  Christians ;  and  yet  it  was  this  fifth  that  had  the  power  and 
taxed  and  persecuted  all  the  rest.  The  liberty  they  wanted  from 
England  was  the  liberty  to  harass  the  majority  of  the  population 
which  did  not  agree  with  them.  Seen  at  this  distance  of  time  Eng 
land  showed  a  marvel  of  patience  in  dealing  with  the  people  of 
Massachusetts  in  the  17th  century.  And  yet  there  is  not  an 
instance  of  severity  which  has  not  had  its  respectable  defenders, 
and  Charles  Francis  Adams,  Jr.,  in  his  "Massachusetts — Its  His 
torians  and  Its  History,"  takes  notice  of  how  these  apologists 
have  in  their  histories  "struggled"  and  "squirmed"  and  "shuffled" 
in  the  face  of  the  record. 

3.  The  third  myth  of  which  I  shall  take  notice  is  one  strangely 
endorsed  by   Charles  Francis  Adams  himself  in  the  same  book. 
He  makes  the  remarkable  statement  that  the  Massachusetts  Con 
stitution  of  1780,  written  by  his  great-grandfather,  John  Adams, 
first  fixed   the   principles   of  the  American   written  constitution, 
and  pioneered  the  way  to  the  Federal  Constitution  of  eight  years 
later.     This  assertion  has  been  taken  up  and  repeated  by  many 
persons  since,  till  it  is  becoming  rapidly  accepted  as  a  fact  by  the 
writing  and  reading  public  of  the  North.    As  in  the  case  of  James 
town,  George  Mason  and  the  Virginia  Constitution  of  1776  are 
ignored  and  made  to  suffer  from  a  propaganda  of  untruth. 

4.  Not  to  mention  numerous  other  subjects  of  propagandism, 
there  is  the  Lincoln  myth.    Hardly  a  single  paper  published  north 
of  Mason  and  Dixon's  line  can  be  taken  up  without  the  reader 
seeing  something  about  this  wonderful  hero  of  the  North.     We 
all  know  that  the  North  started  out  with  making  a  hero  of  John 


10 

Brown,  but  abandoned  him  for  the  much  more  desirable  character 
of  Mr.  Lincoln.  His  assassination  gave  propagandists  a  gocd 
starting  point,  and  since  then  never  has  propaganda  been  more 
active.  Washington  is  even  relegated  to  the  background,  and  a 
highly  worthy  and  eminent  historian,  Dr.  Albert  Bushnell  Hart, 
calls  Lincoln  "The  First  American."  The  ideality  given  him  is 
chiefly  based  upon  a  great  fabrication  sedulously  taught  and  in- 
culated  that  Lincoln  fought  the  South  for  the  abolition  of  slavery 
of  the  negroes.  This  was  denied  to  the  very  last  by  Lincoln  him 
self,  but  is  exploited  in  the  recently  published  play  of  Mr.  Drink- 
water,  an  Englishman,  as  it  has  been  by  hundreds  of  other  writer* 

The  mischievousness  of  this  Lincoln  propaganda  idea  was  ex 
hibited  recently  to  the  full  by  Rev.  Charles  Francis  Potter,  pastor 
of  the  Lenox  Avenue  Unitarian  Church,  New  York,  in  an  address 
delivered  on  March  7,  1920,  at  Earl  Hall,  Columbia  University, 
and  reported  in  the  "Sun  and  New  York  Herald."  This  gentleman 
characterizes  Lincoln  as  the  "future  social  Christ"  of  America, 
and  prophesied  the  coming  of  an  "American  Church"  and  an 
"American  Bible,"  in  which  people  "will  find  in  parallel  columns 
the  stories  of  Christ  and  of  Lincoln." 

Absurd  and  blasphemous  as  this  hysterical  prophecy  may  ap 
pear  to  some,  it  may,  nevertheless,  come  true.  What  the  Roman 
Senate  achieved  by  decree  in  the  case  of  their  emperors,  may  in 
this  day  be  more  certainly  accomplished  by  money  and  propaganda. 
When  the  most  elemental  facts  in  the  history  of  the  United  States 
are  snubbed  and  ignored,  as  in  the  case  of  Jamestown,  it  is  not 
at  all  surprising  that  the  character  of  Lincoln  is  so  represented  by 
the  Northern  press  that  the  true  Lincoln  is  no  longer  recognizable. 
Everything  in  any  way  tending  to  lessen  his  importance  is  studi 
ously  kept  in  the  background. 

The  writer  certainly  has  no  wish  to  detract  from  Lincoln's 
real  merits.  That  he  was  a  man  of  ability  and  originality,  that 
he  was  tactful  and  resourceful,  that  he  was  unwilling  to  resort  to 
extreme  measures  when  milder  measures  would  suffice;  that  he  did 
not  cherish  the  same  venom  against  the  South  as  many  of  his 
party  did — is  frankly  admitted.  But  that  either  of  these  things, 
or  all  of  them,  is  sufficient  to  make  him  an  ideal  person  in  history, 


11 

by  no  means  follows.     There  are  too  many  deficiencies  in  the  op 
posite  scale  of  his  character. 

It  is  impossible  to  associate  idealism  with  coarseness,  and  Lin 
coln,  judged  by  every  test  of  historic  evidence,  was  a  very  coarse 
man.  There  is  no  reason  to  doubt  the  substantial  accuracy  of  his* 
friend  and  admirer,  Ward  H.  Lamon,  who  declared  that  "in  his 
tendency  to  tell  stories  of  the  grosser  sort,  Lincoln  was  restrained 
by  no  presence  and  no  occasion."  Herndon,  who  was  his  law  part 
ner,  says  that  "he  loved  a  story,  however  extravagant  or  vulgar, 
if  it  had  a  good  point,"  and  Don  Piatt  declares  that  he  managed 
to  live  through  the  cares  and  responsibilities  of  the  war  only  by 
reason  of  his  coarse  mold.  After  his  election  Piatt  saw  much  of 
Lincoln,  who  told  stories,  "no  one  of  which  will  bear  printing," 
and  Hugh  McCulloch  tells  of  "the  very  funny  stories"  of  Mr. 
Lincoln  during  the  war,  after  hearing  of  Sheridan's  victory  in  the 
Valley  of  Virginia — stories,  he  says,  "which  would  not  be  lis 
tened  to  with  pleasure  by  very  refined  ears."  And  General  Mc- 
Clellan  said  "his  stories  were  seldom  refined." 

Indeed,  what  kind  of  an  ideal  man  is  he  who  could  open  a 
Cabinet  meeting  called  to  discuss  the  Emancipation  proclamation 
with  reading  foolish  things  from  Artemas  Ward,  and,  when  visiting 
the  field  of  Sharpsburg,  freshly  soaked  wtih  the  blood  of  thousands 
of  brave  men,  could  call  for  the  singing  of  a  ribald  song?10 

Certainly  it  would  never  do  to  put  Lincoln's  letter11  to  Mrs. 
Browning  on  the  subject  of  marriage  in  a  column  parallel  with  the 
stories  of  Christ.  Its  grotesque  humor,  its  coarse  suggestions  and 
its  base  insinuations  against  the  virtue  of  a  lady  to  whom  he  had 
proposed  and  by  whom  he  had  been  rejected,  are  shocking  enough 
without  subjecting  it  to  such  a  test. 

Mr.  Lincoln's  kindness  in  individual  cases  and  professions  of 
charity  in  his  messages,  which  have  been  greatly  exploited,  by  no 
means  prove  that  he  had  any  exalted  sense  of  humanity.  The 
recognized  expression  of  humanity  among  nations  is  the  inter- 

ioDon  Piatt  in  Rice,  Reminiscences  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  p.  486; 
George  Edmunds  (Mrs.  Minor  Meriwether),  Facts  and  Falsehoods, 
73-90. 

uLamon,  Life  of  Lincoln,  1872,  p.  181.  Nicolay  and  Hay,  Letters 
and  Speeches  of  Aoraham  Lincoln,  I,  17-19. 


12 

national  law,  and  Lincoln  and  his  government  acted  repeatedly 
contrary  to  it. 

How  stands  history  in  regard  to  the  claim  of  humanity? 
Here  is  the  testimony  of  the  late  Charles  Francis  Adams,  a  Fed 
eral  Brigadier  General,  and  President  of  the  Massachusetts  His 
torical  Society:  "Our  own  methods  during  the  last  stages  of 
the  war  were  sufficiently  described  by  General  Sheridan,  when 
during  the  Franco-Prussian  war,  as  the  guest  of  Bismarck,  he  de 
clared  against  humanity  in  warfare,  contending  that  the  correct 
policy  was  to  treat  a  hostile  population  with  the  utmost  rigor, 
leaving  them,  as  he  expressed  it,  'Nothing  but  their  eyes  to  weep 
with  over  the  war/ 7;  The  doctrine  that  there  must  be  no  hu 
manity  in  warfare  proclaimed  by  Sheridan  was  also  voiced  by 
Sherman  in  his  letter  to  General  Grant  March  9,  1864:  "Until 
we  can  repopulate  Georgia  it  is  useless  for  us  to  occupy  it,  but  the 
utter  destruction  of  its  roads,  houses  and  people  will  cripple  their 
military  resources  *  *  *  I  can  make  the  march  and  make  Georgia 
howl/'  General  Halleck  wanted  the  site  of  Charleston,  thick  with 
the  heroic  memories  of  the  Revolution,  sowed  with  salt,  and  Gen 
eral  Grant,  in  his  letter  to  General  David  Hunter,  thought  it  pru 
dent  to  notify  the  crows  to  carry  their  provisions  with  them  in 
future  flights  across  the  Valley.  Nothing  need  be  said  of  the 
ferocious  spirit  of  the  lesser  tribe  of  Federal  commanders. 

And  Lincoln,  in  spite  of  the  fine  catchy  sentiment  of  his 
Gettysburg  speech,  gave  his  sanction  to  the  same  policy  when  he 
said  in  response  to  a  protest  against  his  employment  of  negro 
troops :  "No  human  power  can  subdue  this  rebellion  without  the 
use  of  the  emancipation  policy  and  every  other  policy  calculated 
to  weaken  the  moral  and  physical  forces  of  the  rebellion." 

Secretary  Chase,  in  his  diary,  shows  that  on  July  21,  1862,  in 
a  Cabinet  meeting  the  President  expressed  himself  as  "averse  to 
arming  the  negroes,"  but  shortly  after,  on  August  3,  1862,  the 
President  said  on  the  same  question  that  "he  was  pretty  well 
cured  of  any  objections  to  any  measure  except  want  of  adapted- 
ness  to  putting  down  the  Rebellion."  To  the  spoliators  Hunter, 
Sheridan  and  Sherman,  he  wrote  his  enthusiastic  commendations 
and  not  a  word  of  censure. 


13 

By  an  act  of  Congress,  approved  July  17,  1862,  and  pub 
lished  with  an  approving  proclamation  by  Lincoln,  death,  im 
prisonment  or  confiscation  of  property  were  denounced  on  five 
million  white  people  in  the  South  and  all  their  abettors  and  aiders 
in  the  North.  To  reduce  the  South  into  submission  Lincoln  in 
stituted  on  his  own  motion  a  blockade,  a  means  of  war  so  extreme 
that  despite  its  legality  under  the  International  Law,  it  evoked 
from  the  Germans  the  most  savage  retaliation  when  applied  to 
them.  He  threatened  with  hanging  as  pirates  Southern  privateers- 
men  and  as  guerillas  regularly  commissioned  partisans.  He  sus 
pended  the  cartel  of  exchange,  and  when  the  Federal  prisoners 
necessarily  fared  badly  for  lack  of  food  on  account  of  the  blockade 
and  the  universal  devastation,  he  retorted  their  sufferings  upon 
the  Confederate  prisoners — thousands  of  whom,  perished  of  cold 
and  starvation  in  the  midst  of  plenty.  Indeed,  he  refused  to  see 
or  hear  a  committee  of  Federal  prisoners  permitted  by  Mr.  Davis 
to  visit  Washington  in  the  interest  of  the  suffering  prisoners  at 
Andersonville. 

Medicines  were  made  contraband,  and  to  justify  the  seizure  of 
neutral  goods  at  sea  a  great  enlargement  of  the  principle  of  the 
"ultimate  destination"  was  introduced  into  the  International  Law. 
The  property  of  non-combatants  was  seized  everywhere  without 
compensation,  and  within  the  areas  embraced  by  the  Union  lines, 
the  oath  of  allegiance  was  required  of  both  sexes  above  sixteen 
years  of  age  under  penalty  of  being  driven  from  their  homes. 
Houses,  barns,  villages  and  towns  were  destroyed  in  the  South,  and 
in  the  North  by  the  authority  of  the  President  thirty-eight  thou 
sand  persons  are  said  to  have  been  arrested  and  confined  as  pris 
oners  without  trial  or  formal  charge.  Even  the  acts  for  which 
Lincoln  has  been  most  applauded  in  recent  days — his  emancipation 
proclamation — stands  on  no  really  humanitarian  ground. 

He  declared  to  a  committee  of  clergymen  from  Chicago  that  in 
issuing  his  emancipation  proclamation  he  would  look  only  to  its 
effect  as  a  war  measure,  independent  of  its  "legal"  or  "constitu 
tional"  character  or  of  "its  moral  nature  in  view  of  the  possible  con 
sequences  of  insurrection  or  massacre  in  the  Southern  States." 
This  declaration,  which  involved  directly  the  admission  that,  if 


14 

he  were  once  convinced  that  emancipation  would  contribute  to  end 
ing  the  war,  he  would  proclaim  it  regardless  of  massacre,  is  not 
exactly  such  as  would  recommend  him  as  a  champion  of  humanity 
to  the  Southern  people.  Massacre  of  women  and  children  is  a 
dreadful  thing. 

When  we  come  to  examine  Lincoln's  statecraft,  it  appears  to 
indicate  a  lack  of  decision  utterly  at  variance  with  the  inordinate 
estimate  placed  upon  his  abilities  by  modern  propagandists.  These 
people  never  tire  of  blaming  Mr.  Buchanan  for  not  at  once  using 
force  to  suppress  the  "rebel lion,"  and  yet  have  not  a  word  of 
censure  against  Lincoln  for  allowing  a  whole  month  to  pass  with 
out  taking  any  action.  That  he  declared  in  his  inaugural  ad 
dress  that  he  intended  to  hold  the  forts  and  public  property  was 
no  more  than  what  Mr.  Buchanan  had  also  said,  and  this  declara 
tion  was  subject  to  developments.  Even  James  Schouler,  in  his 
history,  states  that  "so  reticent,  indeed,  of  his  plans  had  been 
the  new  President,  while  sifting  opinions  through  the  month,  that 
it  seemed  as  though  he  had  no  policy,  but  was  waiting  for  his  Cabi 
net  to  frame  one  for  him."  Is  this  the  kind  of  appearance  that 
a  President  who  is  expected  to  lead  in  matters  should  assume 
before  the  nation? 

After  the  meeting  of  the  Cabinet  on  March  15,  1861,  in  which 
five  of  the  members  opposed  action,  Lincoln's  mind  more  and  more 
tended  to  the  same  conclusion.  It  is  idle  to  say,  as  many  of  his 
panegyrists  do,  that  Lincoln  had  no  knowledge  of  Seward's  as 
surances  to  Judge  Campbell  that  the  troops  would  be  withdrawn 
from  Fort  Sumter.  Mr.  Schouler  is  an  admirer,  but  he  cannot 
agree  with  this  view  of  the  case,  and  Lincoln's  biographers,  Nicolay 
and  Hay,  soften  "assurances"  down  to  "opinions,"  as  if  this  made 
much  difference  as  to  their  moral  character,  provided  the  informa 
tion  was  to  be  imparted  to  President  Davis,  which  Judge  Camp 
bell  assures  us  he  was  permitted  by  Seward  to  do.  What  person 
had  the  power  to  convert  "opinions"  into  action  unless  it  was  the 
Secretary  of  State  acting  under  the  President? 

It  appears,  indeed,  that  the  policy  of  giving  up  Fort  Sumter 
went  to  the  extent  of  the  preparation  of  an  editorial  for  a  New 
York  paper  to  defend  Lincoln, — a  copy  of  which  was  furnished 


15 


Gov.  Francis  Pickens,  of  South  Carolina,  "by  one  very  near  the 
most  intimate  counsels  of  the  President  of  the  United  States."12 
But  after  signing  an  order  for  withdrawing  the  troops,  Lincoln 
reconsidered  when  the  governors  of  seven  of  the  Northern  States, 
which  were  under  control  of  the  tariff  interests,  assembled  in  Wash 
ington  about  the  first  of  April,  1861,  and  protested  against  it. 

That  the  final  determination  turned  on  the  tariff  question  is 
not  surprising  when  one  considers  the  obstinacy  of  the  North  in 
adhering  to  protection  in  1833.  On  March  16,  1861,  Stanton, 
who  had  been  a  member  of  Buchanan's  Cabinet,  wrote  to  the  ex- 
President  that  "the  Eepublicans  are  beginning  to  think  that  a 
monstrous  blunder  was  made  in  the  tariff  bill  (the  Morrill  tariff 
included  ranges  from  50  to  80  per  cent.),  that  it  will  cut  off  the 
trade  of  New  York,  build  up  New  Orleans  and  the  Southern  ports 
and  leave  the  government  no  revenue."  There  was  a  Confederate 
tariff  of  from  ten  to  twenty  per  cent.,  and  Lincoln's  fears  of  it 
were  ultimately  excited. 

So  on  April  1,  Seward  materially  changed  his  attitude  by 
placing  in  Judge  Campbell's  hands  a  written  memorandum  to 
the  effect  that  the  President  might  desire  to  supply  Fort  Sumter, 
but  would  not  do  so  without  giving  notice.  On  April  4  Lincoln 
had  an  interview  with  Col.  John  B.  Baldwin,  who  came  from 
the  Virginia  Convention,  and  in  response  to  an  appeal  told  him 
he  had  come  too  late,  and  asked  "what  would  become  of  his 
tariff  if  he  allowed  those  men  at  Montgomery  to  open  Charleston 
as  a  port  of  entry  with  their  ten  per  cent,  tariff?"13  That  day 
Lincoln  drafted  instructions  to  Major  Anderson  at  Fort  Sumter 
that  relief  would  be  sent,  and  ordered  him  to  hold  the  fort. 

The  same  sort  of  uncertainty  and  vacillation  hedged  about 
Lincoln's  action  on  Emancipation.  He  suppressed  several  meas 
ures  looking  to  that  end  by  his  generals,  and  on  Sept.  13,  I860, 
declared  that  Emancipation  was  absolutely  futile  and  likened  the 

"Francis  Pickens'  Letter  in  William  and  Mary  College  Quarterly, 
XXIV,  78-84.  It  has  been  suggested  that  the  person  who  gave  the 
editorial  to  Gov.  Pickens  was  Mr.  Todd,  Mrs.  Lincoln's  brother,  who 
resided  in  Alabama  and  joined  the  Confederate  Army. 

isQordon,  Life  o/  Jefferson  Davis,  124. 


16 


policy  to  "the  Pope's  bull  against  the  comet."  He  asked  :  "Would 
my  word  free  the  slaves  when  I  cannot  even  enforce  the  Constitu 
tion  in  the  Rebel  States?  Is  there  a  single  court  or  magistrate 
or  individual  who  would  be  influenced  by  it  there  ?"14  And  yet  on 
September  23,  he  decided  to  do  what  he  had  refused  to  do  ten  days 
before.  The  only  circumstance  which  had  happened  in  the  interval 
was  the  battle  of  Sharpsburg,  but  this  certainly  did  not  affect  the 
substance  of  the  objections  which  he  had  urged  on  Sept.  13.  "No 
court,  nor  magistrate,  nor  individual  in  the  South  was  by  that  bat 
tle  put  in  better  mind  as  to  the  question.  In  the  North  the  effect 
of  the  proclamation,  according  to  Lincoln  himself,  "looked  soberly 
in  the  face  is  not  very  satisfactory."  The  Republicans  were  de 
feated  in  the  elections  which  followed,  and  Mr.  Rhodes,  the  his 
torian,  writes  that  "no  one  can  doubt  that  it  (the  proclamation  of 
emancipation)  was  a  contributing  force."  It  is  difficult  to  under 
stand  what  single  fact  places  Lincoln's  action  on  a  higher  plane 
than  that  of  Lord  Dunmore  during  the  American  Revolution. 

Nevertheless,  the  propagandists  have  been  successful  in  dis 
seminating  the  idea  that  Lincoln  was  the  great  emancipator  and 
that  all  his  shuffling  and  equivocation  was  fine  evidence  of  con 
summate  leadership  on  his  part. 

The  propagandist  has  in  similar  manner  smoothed  away  all 
exceptions  affecting  the  relations  of  President  Lincoln  to  his 
Cabinet.  And  yet  such  exceptions  existed,  if  any  confidence  is  to  be 
placed  in  Charles  Francis  Adams,  Sr.,  who  in  his  "Memorial  Ad 
dress"  on  Seward  represents  him  as  practically  subordinate  to  his 
Secretary  of  State.  And  while  Gideon  Welles,  Secretary  of  the 
Navy,  repels  the  charge  and  claims  that  the  President  was  the 
dominating  mind,  his  narrative  of  the  incredible  liberties  taken  by 
Seward,  and  the  President's  indifference  to  them,  till  roused  by 
others  to  a  proper  sense  of  his  dignity,  does  not  redound  much  to 
Lincoln's  credit.  Welles  complains  much  of  the  assumptions  of 
Seward,  but  doubtless  forgot  his  own  action  in  the  Trent  affair, 
when  he  publicly  approved  the  conduct  of  Wilkes,  subsequently 
disavowed  by  Lincoln.  If,  indeed,  Lincoln  did  not,  on  the  side, 


and   Hay,   Complete  Works  of  Abraham  Lincoln,   VIII, 
30,  31. 


17 

give  Welles  permission  to  act  as  he  did,  which  is  very  probable, 
what  was  this  approval  but  officiousness  on  Welles'  part  meriting 
signal  rebuke?  And  if  Welles  did  write  with  Lincoln's  permis 
sion,  what  was  Lincoln's  final  action  in  apologizing  to  Great  Bri 
tain,  but  a  species  of  camouflage  unworthy  a  President  of  the 
United  States. 

This  deference,,  if  not  submission  to  his  secretaries,  is  said  by 
others  to  have  been  even  more  manifested  by  Lincoln  with  Stanton, 
his  Secretary  of  War,  than  with  Seward,  his  Secretary  of  State. 
John  C.  Hopes  declares  that  Lincoln  and  Stanton  constantly 
interfered  with  military  plans  greatly  to  the  detriment  of  military 
success,  and  the  history  of  the  A'irginia  campaigns  is  a  history  of 
official  blunders  in  the  appointment  by  Lincoln  of  incompetent 
generals.  Charles  Francis  Adams,  Sr.,  declares  in  the  same 
"Memorial  Address"  on  Seward  that  Lincoln  was  "quite  deficient 
in  his  acquaintance  with  the  character  and  qualities  of  public 
men  or  their  aptitude  for  the  positions  to  which  he  assigned  them. 
Indeed  he  never  selected  them  solely  by  that  standard."  Welles,  in 
his  rejoinder,  does  not  deny  that  such  appointments  were  made, 
but  retorts  only  by  saying  they  occurred  chiefly  on  the  recom 
mendation  of  Mr.  Seward  "who  was  vigilant  and  tenacious  in  dis 
pensing  the  patronage  of  the  State  Department."  This  does  not 
help  the  case.  The  very  point  against  Lincoln  is  that  he  did  not 
<exert  his  own  individuality  sufficiently  against  a  lot  of  impudent 
secretaries.  It  is  impossible  to  suppose  that  any  other  man,  in  the 
whole  list  of  Presidents,  would  have  rested  under  such  vassalage. 

Lincoln's  weakness  of  character  is  aptly  illustrated  by  his 
course  at  other  times.  He  never  could  rise  above  the  idea  that 
the  South  was  fighting  for  slavery,  and  though  the  South  re 
sented  the  suggestion  as  an  insult  he  more  than  once  proposed  to 
his  Cabinet  to  pay  the  South  for  their  slaves,  if  they  would  return 
to  the  Union.  But  his  Cabinet,  for  quite  different  reasons,  re 
sisted  the  project,  and  Lincoln  submitted.  Indeed,  his  very  last 
act  showed  how  incapable  he  was  of  withstanding  the  influence  of 
men  of  superior  power  like  Stanton.  On  his  visit  to  Richmond, 
after  the  evacuation  in  April,  1865,  he  authorized  the  Virginia 
Legislature  to  be  called  together,  and  yet  he  had  hardly  returned 


18 

to  Washington  when,  succumbing  to  the  vehement  protests  of 
Stanton,  as  Stanton  himself  says,  he  recalled  the  permission,,  ex 
cusing  himself  on  grounds  which  are  plainly  matter  of  after 
thought.15 

Much  important  detail  is  furnished  by  Dr.  Clifton  B.  Hall 
towards  enabling  us  to  judge  of  Lincoln's  character  in  his  recent 
life  of  "Andrew  Johnson,  Military  Governor  of  Tennessee/'  The 
object  of  the  appointment  was  the  restoration  of  Tennessee  to  the 
Union,  but  Lincoln,  despite  his  professions  of  "charity,"  instead 
of  selecting  a  cool,  conservative  person  for  the  position,  took  An 
drew  Johnson — a  man  whom  Dr.  Hall  describes  as  one  of  the  most 
venomous  and  hated  men  in  Tennessee.  He  not  only  took  him, 
but  stood  by  him,  and  condoned  all  his  violence,  which  got  him 
into  fierce  quarrels  with  all  the  Federal  generals  at  any  time  in 
Tennessee.  That  Andrew  Johnson  was  in  large  degree  a  dema 
gogue,  as  Dr.  Hall  states,  is  undoubtedly  true,  and  yet  he  had 
certain  qualities,  which  exhibited  under  other  conditions,  com 
mand  our  admiration  and  esteem.  No  one  can  tell  how  far  Lin 
coln  would  have  allowed  the  radicals  to  go  after  the  war  in  their 
reconstruction  of  the  South.  His  action  referred  to  in  regard  to 
the  Virginia  Legislature  is  not  particularly  encouraging,  but 
Johnson's  conduct  is  a  matter  of  history.  However  violent  he  was, 
while  the  war  was  going  on,  he  proved  himself  incapable,  after 
the  war  was  over,  of  the  meanness  of  persecuting  a  defenseless 
and  conquered  people;  and  asserting  his  authority  as  President, 
as  any  self-respecting  man  would  have  done,  he  turned  the  truer 
lent  Stanton  out  of  office,  thereby  risking  expulsion  from  his  own 
high  position  at  the  hands  of  a  crazy  and  malignant  Congress. 

In  prosecuting  the  war  Lincoln  appealed  to  a  great  idea — the 
Union — which  he  declared  was  his  sole  idea  in  prosecuting  the 
war,  but  the  old  Union  was  founded  on  consent  and  the  Union  he 
had  in  mind  was  one  of  force.  His  war,  therefore,  was  contrary 
to  the  principles  of  self-government  expressed  in  the  Declaration 
of  Independence  and  to  the  modern  principle  of  self-determina 
tion,  now  the  accepted  doctrine  of  the  world — a  doctrine  not 

isConnor,  Life  of  John  A.  Campbell,  174-198. 


19 

only  endorsed  by  the  present  President  of  the  United  States, 
but  recently  by  both  houses  of  Congress,  in  the  case  of  Ireland— 
a  divided  and  much  weaker  country  than  the  Confederates  States 
of  America,  which  had  a  thoroughly  organized  government,  in 
possession  of  a  territory  more  than  half  the  size  of  Europe. 

The  truth  is,  there  never  was  a  war  more  inconsistent  in 
principle  than  that  waged  against  the  Southern  States  in  1861. 
Besides  the  great  territory  which  it  occupied  the  Southern  Gov 
ernment  placed  in  the  field  armies  as  vast  as  Napoleon's,  and  for 
four  years  waged  a  war  on  equal  terms  with  the  great  and  popu 
lous  North,  aided  by  recruits  from  Europe  and  enlistments  from 
the  South's  own  population.  Indeed,  we  have  Lincoln's  own  state 
ment  that  without  the  aid  of  the  Southern  negro  troops  he  would 
have  had  "to  abandon  the  war  in  three  weeks."16 

The  present  Southerners  are  glad  to  be  free  of  slavery  and  are 
loyal  citizens  of  the  Union,  but  this  is  far  from  saying  that  they 
approve  the  violent  methods  by  which  slavery  was  abolished  and 
the  Union  restored. 

In  conclusion  of  this  article  on  propaganda,  I  may  cite  a 
few  sentences  from  Robert  Quillen  in  the  Saturday  Evening  Post 
for  January  24,  1920,  which  the  editors  might  have  taken  to 
heart  when  preparing  their  editorial  about  Plymouth  Rock. 

"Since  the  purpose  of  propaganda  is  to  present  one  side  of  a 
case,  it  is  from  its  very  inception  a  distortion  of  facts,  and  an 
avoidance  of  the  whole  truth.  *  *  *  Truth  lies  at  the  bottom 
of  a  well  and  we  are  poisoning  the  well.  *  *  *  Propaganda  has 
made  doubters  of  us  all." 

Was  the  divine  Pocahontas  after  all  correct,  when  in  her  inter 
view  with  John  Smith  in  England  in  1616  she  characterized  the 
white  race  as  hopeless  liars? 

The  exact  language  of  Pocahontas  was:  "Your  countrymen 
will  lie  much." 


incomplete  Works  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  X,  190. 


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